Crazy Courtney Love Deals with 99 Problems at Sundance

January 29, 2013 By Chris Chambers

Last week, Courtney Love popped up at the Sundance Film Festival … despite not appearing in or having any apparent connection to any of the movies showing there … leading to mild panic that she might be planning to crash Dave Grohl’s big documentary debut. She was spotted lurking around Park City … specifically in the swag suites … and then it was suddenly announced that she would play a show. That night.

Courtney is a polarizing figure to say the least. She’s abrasive, obnoxious, and histrionic … and now pushing 50 years old, she’s still popping up in the tabloid news pretty regularly for saying, doing, or creating something rude, lewd, tacky, or inappropriate. As far as I can tell, she’s only tolerated because she’s also the widow of one of the biggest rock icons of the last few decades.

Personally, I have always wanted to like her … her brash, ballsy swagger appeals to me in an inexplicable way … but her music is so terrible and her behavior is so generally off-putting, that I have never been completely successful.

On the night of her surprise performance, Courtney was interviewed for ABC News and touched on a number of topics in her characteristically zany manner. She spoke of a writing a book about her life (evidently forgetting that she already published her diaries in 2006). She spoke of a short story she was writing for The New Yorker that she described as “pretty good trope and kind of New Yorker-ish.”

Courtney also discussed her clothing line, her new single (“It’s sick, slamming, great…. I’m telling you, it’s probably the greatest rock song I’ve ever heard”), and then proceeded to speculate about super-couple Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale.

Courtney and Gwen have had a silly girl-battle going for years, beginning with Courtney making an unnecessary comment about Gwen in Seventeen Magazine. A pissed-off Gwen responded by writing the horrible but catchy song “Hollaback Girl,” which indirectly references crazy Courtney. Then, in an especially classy move, Courtney publically declared that she nailed Gavin while he was dating Gwen.

In her recent interview, Courtney decided to jump back into the fray by trashing Gavin’s band and declaring that Gwen’s clothing line, L.A.M.B., is actually run by Gavin. Why that’s any of Courtney’s business is unclear.

During her performance, in addition to playing a bizarre cover of Jay-Z’s “99 Problems,” Courtney chose to play songs that she believes “really, really should’ve been hits and just weren’t for marketing reasons,” including “Skinny Little Bitch,” “Violet,” and “How Dirty Girls Get Clean.” And I have to admit, for a complete loon, she does put on a good show.